


The Friendly Accomodation Job

by quarter_to_five



Category: Leverage, The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-07 12:56:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quarter_to_five/pseuds/quarter_to_five





	1. Chapter 1

Hardison adjusted his glasses and tried to put a certain needy eagerness into his body language while he flipped through the comic books. His earbud relayed the coversation from the other side of the comic book store, where he had hacked Howard Wolowitz’s phone to eavesdrop.  
  
“Sheldon is dungeonmaster?” an Indian accept complained. “We’re going to spend all night arguing about the placement of semi-colons in the guidebook again.”  
  
“It rendered the entire pragraph ambiguous! We couldn’t play like that!” a new voice, presumably Sheldon’s, snapped. Hardison couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. He glanced casually over to see a lanky man leaning forward earnestly. “Wizards of the Coast, by the way, have not responded to my letter of complaint.”  
  
“It is his turn,” the fourth guy said in bedraggled sort of way. “And your complaint was eleven thousand words long!”  
  
 _“Ok, I’m going in,”_ Hardison said under his breath. _“Before this gets out of control.”_  
  
 _“Good luck,”_ Parker and Eliott replied. Eliott sarcastic, Parker enthusiatic. _“Have fun!”_ she added.  
  
That girl knew him so well.  
  
He squared his shoulder let his meandering route through the store pass by the astronaut and his three friends just as the argument about who should be dungeonmaster was heating up.  
  
“Are you guys playing D &D?” he interrupted smoothly. They stared at him with confusion, as if trying to process the sheer notion of a person simply walking up and starting a conversation. Hardison made his grin even wider, and a little desperate. “I love D&D!”  
  
#  
  
 _“Ok, I’m going in,”_ Parker said to her earbud, and started crying. Proper, soul-rending sobs, tears and shaking shoulders and everything. She was getting pretty good at it, if she did say so herself.  
  
It didn’t take the bartender long to notice. The blonde turned away from the two women she had been talking to at the other end of the bar, “Oh, sweetie, do you want to talk about it?”  
  
Make them work for it, Sophie had always said. Make them invested. Parker shook her head, and went on sobbing. She had the full attention of the three women now. “I’m...I’m so sorry.”  
  
“No, no,” the bartender patted her hand. “What’s a bar for, right?”  
  
“I...I suppose.” She made a show of wiping her eyes. “I’m not usually like this.”  
  
“Is it about a guy?” the small one asked. Parker recognized her as Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz.  
  
Parker made her smile quiver. “Isn’t it always?”  
  
The other woman, who wore glasses and a striped cardigan, stepped forward eagerly. “Tell us what that rat bastard did! We will accept your one-sided and emotional version of the story and castigate him from afar in a show of female solidarity!”  
  
The smile Parker hid this time was a real one.  
  
#  
  
Eliott picked the lock and entered the small apartment like he belonged there. _“Ok, I’m going in.”_  
  
#  
  
“I’m not comfortable with you simply inviting a stranger into our home,” Sheldon whispered to Leonard in the kitchen.  
  
Leonard shrugged and looked over at where Joe, the guy from the comic book store, sat on the couch, deep in conversation with Howard over their character-sheets. “He’s hardly a stranger. We talked for like an hour at the store. Poor guy just broke up with his girlfriend, he’s new in town, he’s...anyway, maybe it’s time to expand our circle a little.”  
  
“Expand our circle.” Sheldon shook his head. “Why don’t you invite Captain Sweatpants next week. Or Lonely Larry. Or Stuart.”  
  
“We have Stuart over a lot,” Leonard pointed out.  
  
“And look how well that always goes. And we know even less about this guy.”  
  
“We know...” actually, Leonard wasn’t sure what he knew about their new friend. Nor could he quite recall what Joel had talked about all that time at the comic book store, or how inviting him to come hang out in the apartment had become the obvious next step of their aquaintance.  Now that he thought of it, maybe they had been the ones doing most of the talking. Nevertheless, he had a definite impression of a kindered spirit, someone totally trustworthy and friendly. “Anyway, you like him. You spent the whole drive arguing about cryptography.”  
  
“I do not,” Sheldon made a face and air-quotes, “’like him’. I’m not some hippie. I like cryptography.”  
  
#  
  
In Penny’s apartment the blonde woman from the bar, who had introduced herself as Alice, put down her barely-touched wineglass and excused herself to go to the bathroom.  
  
“I can’t believe you invited her over!” Bernadette said, looking after the blonde woman.  
  
Penny shrugged. “She’s just been dumped, she’s lonely, insecure, no self-esteem...”  
  
“That is so nice of you,” Amy said.  
  
“I was thinking we could set her up with Raj.”  
  
“Ooh! Good call!” Bernadette said.  
  
As if summoned, Raj came in without knocking. “Hey, do you have any popcorn? We’re out. Tonight’s D &D is wild.”  
  
Penny jumped up. “Listen, Raj, we met this girl in the restaraunt - she’s hot, funny, depressed - you have a real shot! She’s in the bathroom now. Just play it cool when she comes out.”  
  
“What? Here? Now?” Raj’s voice went up two octaves.  
  
“What part of ‘play it cool’ is so hard to understand?” Bernadette hissed.  
  
They heard the bathroom door open, and then Alice came back to the living room. She muttered something under her breath.  
  
Penny frowned. “Did you say ‘the turncoat Elvis’?”  
  
Alice smiled. “Just...talking to myself. About how sad I am.”  
  
#  
  
 _“’The Turncoat Elvis?’ Are you sure?”_ Hardison murmured to Parker.  
  
“What did you say?” Howard asked.  
  
“Nothing, nothing...just thinking about my girlfriend. My ex-girlfriend, I mean,” he put a heartbreaking catch in his voice.  
  
“I’m sorry, man. That’s rough, her dumping you like that,” Leonard came over and patted his shoulder.  
  
Hardison buried his face in his hands. “I think I’m still in love with her.”  
  
Sheldon followed Leonard and sat down in his spot on the couch.  
  
“Of course you’re still in love with her!” Howard agreed. “They never think about us. Never think about our feelings.”  
  
“I’d take it all back, everything I said...only she won’t talk to me. Just hangs up the phone.” Hardison sobbed.  
  
Sheldon rolled the dice. “Sixteen!” No one was paying attention. He looked up, confused. “When did we stop playing D &D?”  
  
#  
  
Eliott put the wedding photographs back into their place in the freakishly well organized closet at the Wolowitz-Rostenkowski residence. They showed a small, sweet wedding that bore every sign of having been hastily put together on a rooftop. Best of all, there was no sign of a minister or a rabbi. No, they had been married by their friends, no doubt ordained on the internet for the task. It was adorable. Marshmallow-hearted romantics, the lot of them.  
  
 _“Definitely The Turncoat Elvis,”_ he agreed with Parker, and went to copy the contents of the couple’s laptops.  
  
#  
  
Back at Penny’s, Amy sidled up to Raj. “Are you going to, you know, make your move?” She jerked her head in the direction of the sobbing girl on the couch.  
  
Raj stared at her. “Of course not. Look at her. She’s in love,” he whispered in awe.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Penny poured Alice another glass of wine. “So, why did you break up?”  
  
“You know...” Alice sighed, “there was no good reason. Just a fight that went too far. We’re so different - he’s kind of a geek. Always with a million things to occupy him - computers, gadgets, games, and me...I’m just a simple girl.”  
  
“I’m sure that’s not how he felt.” Bernadette sat and put her arm around the other woman. “Have you thought about giving him a call?”  
  
“He’s called,” Alice admitted. “But I hung up. I’m afraid i’ll just sound stupid again. If only I could see him...”  
  
“Ask her to see a picture,” Raj whispered urgenltly in Amy’s ear.  
  
“You ask her.”  
  
“It will be weird if I ask her.”  
  
“Was he hot?” Amy blurted out loudly. She ignored Raj’s sideways look. “I mean, do you have a picture?”  
  
Alice wanly drew her hair back from her red-rimmed eyes. “I guess I do,” she said and looked through her phone. Tears threatened to flow again as she showed Amy - and Raj, peering over her shoulder - the picture. “He is hot.”  
  
“Yes he is,” Amy whispered to Raj, but he was out of the door before the words were out of her mouth.  
  
#  
  
 _“Took them long enough,”_ Eliott said cheerfully, wiping down the doorknob to eliminate the possibility of fingerprints. _“I guess a PhD isn’t everything.”_  
  
#  
  
Raj dashed back across the hall. “Joe! Come here!” He was smiling so hard his cheeks hurt.    
  
“What is it?”  
  
“There’s something I want you to see.”  
  
“Ok,” Joe frowned and followed Raj out to the hall. Howard and Leonard exchanged a quick look and chased after them.  
  
Sheldon looked around from his spot. He was alone in the apartment. “This is a social game,” he pointedly told the empty room, then put down the dice, sighed and trailed everyone to the stairwell.  
  
Amy, Bernadette and Penny were crowded in the open door of apartment 4b. With them stood a slim blonde woman.  
  
“Alice!” Joe exclaimed, emotion thick in his voice.  
  
“Oh, Joe!” She cried.  
  
As if drawn together by the very forces of nature, the couple met in front of the broken elevator.  
  
“Oh my god!” Penny yelled. “How...?”  
  
“What are the odds?” Howard shook his head, a broad smile smeared across his face. “We met him in the comic book store.”  
  
“We met her at the Cheesecake Factory,” Amy said.  
  
Joe and Alice were beyond noticing anything. They were locked together in a passionate embrace, kisses and tears all at once.  
  
“I’m so sorry, Alice,” Joe said. “Forgive me, please.”  
  
“No, you have to forgive me. I can’t live without you.”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
“I love you too.”  
  
“Just like that, huh?” Leonard said.  
  
“Alice?” Joe suddenly took a step back from her.  
  
“What is it, my love?” Alice asked.  
  
Joe dropped slowly to one knee. “I never want to be apart from you again. Will you marry me?”  
  
“Yes. Oh, yes,” she said instantly and pulled him back to his feet to kiss him again.  
  
“Just like that,” Penny said, looking at the happy new couple.  
  
Alice broke the embrace. “Now. Let’s do it right now.”  
  
“Get married right now?” Joe stared at her. “But how? City hall must be closed...But you’re right, I can’t wait until morning!”  
  
Bernadette clapped her hands together. “We can do it!”  
  
“What?” Alice turned to her. “What do you mean, my new friend?”  
  
“We can marry you! We’re ordained!” She said, almost jumping up and down.  
  
Howard went to her and put his arm around her shoulder. “Actually, we aren’t. We were the ones getting married, remember?”  
  
Bernadetted stopped bouncing. “Oh. Right. But everyone else can marry you! They married us.”  
  
Alice gasped with delight. “Oh, you can? Would you? It’s such an imposition, but...”  
  
“It isn’t, at all!” Raj said.  
  
“Yes!” Penny exclaimed.  
  
“We’d love to!” Leonard added.  
  
“Of course!” Amy was giddy.  
  
“Nope.” Sheldon shrugged. The energy went out of the moment like a soap bubble bursting.  
  
#  
  
Eliott frowned and started the car. _“What just happened?”_  



	2. Chapter 2

“Sheldon!” Leonard stared at his roomate.  
  
“I don’t know them.” He turned to Alice and Joe. “I don’t know you.”  
  
“No, of course not...” Joe said. “We shouldn’t impose on you. Four...four people is more than enough to marry us. One person will do!” His smile seemed unsure.  
  
“Are you sure it’s something you want?” Penny asked suddenly.  
  
“Yes!” Alice shrieked, too loud.  
  
“Oh, sweetie...you’re having a rough night, maybe you want to think about this?”  
  
“It is a bit inappropriate,” Leonard added. “Just officiating at the wedding of total strangers...”  
  
“But. It’s. So. Romantic.” Joe said through gritted teeth, glaring at Sheldon.  
  
“Or something you’re going to really regret tommorow,” Amy pointed out. “I don’t feel comfortable doing this.”  
  
“Yeah...it seems a bit contrived.” Howard was frowning, looking back and forth between Alice and Joe. “I mean, what are the odds?”  
  
“It’s all a little too good to be true...” Bernadette agreed.  
  
“I’ll still marry you!” Raj said.  
  
“Oh, what’s the point.” Alice threw up her hands. “Hardison, let’s go.” She turned on her heel and started down the stairs.  
  
“Parker?” Joe - Hardison? - called after her, and then he shrugged and followed her down. “Sorry, you guys. Good game.”  
  
The seven friends stood on the landing. “What the hell just happened?” Leonard asked.  
  
“Who cares, they’re gone now.” Sheldon’s relief was obvious. “Come on, it’s your turn to roll.”  
  
Everyone stared at him in amazement, which was interrupted by Joe and Alice, or, rather, Parker and Hardison, sprinting back up the stairs and barreling into them.  
  
“Move, move, move,” Parker yelled. “Get inside!” she shoved them through the door, Hardison helping her. Below, they could hear heavy bootsteps climbing the stairs. She barely had them all inside and had slammed the door shut behind her when someone crashed against it from the outside.  
  
“Eliott, where are you?” Hardison shouted and joined Parker in barricading the door.  
  
“Who’s Eliott?” Howard asked.  
  
“That’s what’s bothering you about this situation?” Penny yelled.  
  
“Scatter, all of you!” Hardison threw to the group.  
  
Penny grabbed Leonard and dragged him behind the couch. Bernadette, Howard and Raj ducked behind the kitchen island. Amy pulled Sheldon to the hall.  
  
“Turn the flag upside down,” Sheldon said to Raj.  
  
“What?” Raj poked his head up over the counter.  
  
“On the fridge,” Sheldon said.  
  
Raj nodded, stood and obediently turned the magnet upside down.  
  
“Not the time!” Bernadette yelled, pulling him back down.  
  
“The Cat in the Paintbox?” Parker asked Hardison.  
  
“Go,” he said.  
  
Hardison dodged to the side and Parker spun and smoothly opened the door. She faced a massive hulk of a man, with close cropped hair and an ill-fitting suit. “Hi, thanks for the pizza!” she said brightly.  
  
The thug frowned. “What pizza?”  
  
“I’m asking you!” Parker took advantage of the moment and kicked him hard in the nuts. He bent over and Hardison slammed him in the head with a massive book he had grabbed off the shelf.  
  
The thug went down, but he was replace by two more men who stepped over their comrade’s body without a glance. Parker jumped on the back of one with a shriek, her fingers searching for his eyes.  
  
The other thug punched Hardison in the jaw, slamming him to the floor. He was about to kick him in the ribs when Penny dashed for the door and grabbed the sword that hung next to it. She swung it like a baseball bat, the flat connecting with the thug’s skull with a meaty sort of sound. He collapsed like a sack of cornflakes.  
  
“Oh my god, I love you!” Leonard yelled in encouragement.  
  
Hardison was already scrambling back to his feet and threw himself at the third man. He punched him in the kidney while Parker pulled him to the floor and slammed his head into her knee along the way.  
  
The room was very quiet suddenly, three men down, Hardison and Parker looking at one another with a warm affection, and Penny in the middle, a replica Longclaw bastard sword from Game of Thrones in both hands.  
  
“What? What! Who are you?” Howard yelled.  
  
Parker and Hardison exchanged a look. “Um. It’s complicated to explain,” Hardison started.  
  
Another man charged through the door, hauling two more suited men by a firm grip on their ears.  
  
“But that’s Eliott! If you were wondering.”  
  
#  
  
“Me?” Bernadette squeaked. “Why is this all about me?” She was seated on the couch, clutching a cup of tea. Sheldon was coping with the trauma of having his home invaded by standing in the kitchen and making hot beverages. For once, they were thoroughly welcome.  
  
“Your company created a slow-acting, untraceable bio-weapon.” Hardison explained. “And they sold it to the Russian government. Hundreds of children in Kamchatka are dying, right now.”  
  
“Oh my god! I didn’t know that,” Bernadette insisted, tears rimming her blue eyes. “I work on trying to cure male pattern baldness.”  
  
“Thousands of people work for her company.” Howard stepped in to defend his wife. “You can’t blame this on Bernie.”  
  
“You think you’re working on male pattern baldness,” Eliott said. “What you’re actually woking on is the antidote.”  
  
“That’s good,” Amy pointed out.  
  
“No, it isn’t,” Hardison said. “Since they’re planning on selling that to Russia as well, to give them the upper hand in the negotiations with the rebels.”  
  
“I didn’t know there was a rebellion in Kamchatka,” Sheldon said while he brought over two more cups of tea. (This was now one more than anyone wanted.) “I thought the whole peninula was almost-inaccesible and thinly populated.”  
  
“You don’t even know who the president is,” Leonard said.  
  
“Don’t be absurd. I can list all of the presidents. And all the vice presidents. And all the runners-up. And all the vice-presidential runners-up. Chronologically, by home state, in alphabetical order: Adams, John. Adams, John Quincy. Arthur, Chester-”  
  
Eliott, Parker and Hardison all turned to stare at him. Then they stared at everyone else for not staring at him.  
  
Leonard cut him off. “Describe one major issue in the last election.”  
  
Sheldon glared at him. “I think we need more hot beverages,” he said and beat a retreat to the kitchen.  
  
“Can we get back to the dying children and the pile of assassins, please?” Penny asked. She poked one of the now securely zip-tied, unconscious men with her foot. She was still holding onto Longclaw.  
  
Eliott snorted. “Assassins. Please. These guys are just run-of-the-mill heavies, trying to scare us off.”  
  
“Speaking of that, who the hell are you?” Bernadette asked.  
  
Eliott sighed, Hardison shrugged, Parker nodded, grinned and said, “the rich and powerful, they take what they want. We steal it back. Sometimes, bad guys make the best good guys. We provide...leverage.”  
  
“You’re...thieves?” Raj wondered.  
  
“You’re communists?” Amy asked.  
  
“You’re superheroes!” Leonard decided.  
  
“Well, we’ve been called vigilantes,” Hardison said.  
  
“That’s even cooler.” Leonard said.  
  
“I know! Thematically speaking, i’ve always preferred, say, Batman-” Hardison started.  
  
Eliott cut him off. “Not now, geeks.”  
  
“Right. What does Bernadette’s work have to do with trying to get our friends to marry you in front of a broken elevator?” Howard asked.  
  
“It goes like this,” Hardison re-routed his enthusiasm from Batman to the con. “You serendipitously meet this split up, but perfect couple. You fix them and marry them, and because you got us back together, now you’re all invested. We’d get to talking with you and Bernadette in particular, we’d find out we had so much in common, etc, etc. In a few days, when we called you from our honeymoon and told you that a lucky mix-up meant the hotel booked two rooms for us and would you like to join us, it’s hardly going to seem weird at all.”  
  
There was a moment of silence. “Wow,” Raj said. “That’s perfect.”  
  
“That is far fetched and unbelievable,” Bernadette said.  
  
“It does require a certain...verve to pull off,” Eliott admitted. “A rhythm, an energy. It’s all about the romance, the drama, the emotions override the fact it’s all so unlikely.”  
  
Parker nodded. “Then we would have put you in a series of compromising situations, used them to blackmail you for full cooperation to access your work and then probably left you tied up and drugged in a hotel room for a couple of days while we finished the job. It should have worked,” Parker said. “I don’t know why it didn’t. Maybe i’m just not cut out for running the plan.”  
  
Hardison put an arm around her shoulder. “No, babe, this isn’t on you...”  
  
“Yeah, we would totally have fallen for it,” Penny said. “It was working perfectly! I was thinking ‘this is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.’” She paused to think about it. “No, this is on Sheldon.”  
  
Every eye turned to glare at Sheldon, who took a moment to notice.  
  
“What is wrong with you?” Parker asked.  
  
“Hey!” Amy said. “He stopped us all falling into a trap.”  
  
Eliott shrugged. “There’s that. Besides, it’s for the best. You two couldn’t really get married.”  
  
It was Eliott’s turn to get glared at. “Why not?” Parker asked.  
  
“If you get married, I’m officiating,” Eliott explained.  
  
“Aw.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Can we get back to talking about the assassins and the dying children?” Howard whispered. “Again?”  
  
“I think they’re having a moment,” Leonard whispered back.  
  
“Can’t interrupt that,” Raj agreed.  
  
“I can!” Bernadette stood up and stamped her foot. “So, now what?”  
  
Eliott shrugged. “We go to plan B.”  
  
“Plan E,” Parked corrected. “This one is turning out kind of tricky.”  
  
“You don’t have time,” Bernadette said. “We’ve wrapped the project. There’s a big party for it right now.”  
  
“There’s a big party and you weren’t invited?” Howard asked.  
  
“Of course I was, but I didn’t want you to come and embarass yourself.”  
  
Howard thought about it. “That is so nice of you, honey.”  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
Hardison turned to Parker. “They moved up the schedule.”  
  
She nodded. “Because of Plan C, last week. We burned ourselves with that one. We’ll just have to go in tonight and get the files before they’re handed over.”  
  
Hardison shook his head. “This is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. They take their intellectual property seriously. It’s a Quant-Lock 3000 system. There’s a reason we’re trying to blackmail employees into helping us,” he nodded at Bernadette. “I need weeks, months, of preparations before I can try to hack their system. It’ll be too late by then.”  
  
“You’ve got three hours,” Eliott said.  
  
Hardison shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”  
  
“Are you saying you can’t do it?”  
  
“Not tonight, man.”  
  
“I can,” Sheldon interrupted.  
  
Hardison laughed. “Listen, professor - you might know a bit of theory, but this is a state of the art system, based on cutting edge quantum computing cryptology. It’s never been hacked before.”  
  
“Yes, because their encryption is based on algorithms I worked out for my quantum entanglement work.” Sheldon said. “When I was fifteen.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
Leonards shrugged affirmatively. “I wouldn’t be too impressed. He can do that, but you can’t send him shopping on his own, or he’ll only buy things in boxes of the same color.”  
  
“Admit our shelves look nicer that way!” Sheldon said.  
  
Leonard shook his head silently. Sheldon scowled.  
  
“How do you people get anything done?” Eliott asked.  
  
“We don’t need to, we’re physicists.”  
  
Parker frowned. “We do have a bartender here,” she looked around the group. “...and an astronaut.”  
  
“You’re not thinking...” Hardison looked at Howard speculatively.  
  
“The Kinshasa Conundrum?” Eliott said.  
  
Parker clapped her hands together. “We’re all going to the party.” She thought about it a moment. “Anyone who doesn’t want to can be drugged and tied up, if they prefer,” she added in a friendly manner. It was helpful to give people options.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

“ _Alarms are down,”_ Hardison said in her ear. _“You’ve got-”_

 _“Three and a half minutes, I know,”_ Parker said. She was trying to concentrate on the mission, but his voice got through and made her smile anyway.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” Sheldon told her.

Well, that was just too bad. Parker shrugged, grabbed him by the harness on the back of his neck and threw them both off the roof.

The cable sagged, then grew taut. A fall turned into an exhilerating slide to the next building over. Parker landed like a cat, Sheldon like a sack of IKEA furniture. He stared at her, frozen, disbelieving the ground under his feet.

“No time,” Parker said, and pulled him towards the roof door.

Twenty nine seconds to slide across. Seven to run to the door. Fifteen seconds to pick the lock. Thirty seconds to sprint down the two floors to the one with the server toom. Seventeen seconds to pick this lock. Forty seconds of dashing along corridors to find the room. Thirty five seconds to pick that lock. Five seconds to haul Sheldon in after her and close the door. Thirty two seconds to spare.

“It would have been a minute if not for you,” she told Sheldon. “Anyhow, you’re up.”

#

“This is the coolest thing I have ever done in my entire life,” Leonard said. He was bent over Hardison’s shoulder inside the new surveillance van, entranced by the screens. “By a long shot. A really long shot.”

Eliot turned to look at him. “You’re not doing anything.”

Leonard stopped to think about it. Howard and Bernadette were at the party. Penny had snuck in as a bartender. Raj was wearing an improbable headdress and wandering around speaking Hindi. Sheldon was up on the roof, hacking things. Even Amy was doing her closest approximation of casual while she loitered near the van as a lookout. That had originally been Leonard’s job, but he had started hyperventillating. He was now down to ‘hiding in the van and doing no damage.’

“This is the coolest I have ever done in my entire life,” he said.

#

Raj nodded at the beautiful rich woman in his most inscrutable, exotic way. He solemnly recited the Hindi lyrics to jingle for a cellphone company that had gotten stuck in his head when he has been home for Sanjay’s wedding. “That is our sacred chant, a thousand years old,” he told her.

Amazingly, the woman was smiling, nodding, doing that thing that women did with their neck and their hair and their eyes that meant they approved.

Why the hell was this working? It was probably the turban, an unlikely concoction of silk scarves that the Eliot dude had wrapped around his head.

“You must tell me everything,” said the beautiful woman, and she reached out and touched his arm.

 _“A little more,”_ Hardison’s voice said in his ear. IN HIS EAR! How cool was that? _“Paint her a picture.”_

“Your eyes remind me of the lotus flowers that float in the still pools in the moonlight,” he told her. He had said things like that to women a hundred times, and they just looked at him funny. She was looking at him like she could see the moonlight. “You must come visit me there, and smell the perfume which the monks produce from the wild white jasmine.”

“Oh, I will.” The beautiful woman, who was the vice president of the pharmaceutical company, stood very close to him.

Of course, he wasn’t actually hitting on her - he was just pretending to hit on her, for the mission. Like a superhero. Well, a spy. Well, a thief. A superhero undercover as a thief. It was so much easier, somehow, than trying to talk to a woman at a bar. Exciting and interesting and not terrifying almost at all. Here he was, Raj Koothrappali, being interesting, for real, and not just trying to seem that way by cobbling together a bit of tacky Orientalist imagery to cover up having nothing at all to say. If only the rich, evil, beautiful woman could see the irony.

Or maybe it was just the confidence that came with a silly hat.

#

“No, I meant India, not Indonesia! Did I say Indonesia? Of course I know the difference between India and...” It was no good, the man she had been supposed to charm and befuddle was rolling his eyes and walking away. Damn it, she knew this. India was a huge country, and it was where Raj was from, and Indonesia was...somewhere else. Was it a province of India, come to think of it?

“Damn it,” she stamped her foot in frustration. Why was it so hard to act smart?

#

 _"Penny lost the old executive,"_ Eliot said in her ear. _"He's walking towards the door."_

Parker stepped away from Sheldon. He was frowning at a screen in furious concentration, and beyond noticing anything. She pieced together the hall downstairs in her mind. Her assets, her victims, the vectors of motion and obstacles of desire.

"Howard, Bernadette," she ordered. "Intercept the old executive. Bernadette, you will mention how much you love riding horses-"

 _"I hate horses,"_ Bernadette said.

Parked ignored her. "-It will remind him of his granddaughter. Then, Howard, you talk about space. It will make him feel as thought his life and dreams have passed him by."

 _"Parker, that won't be enough-"_ Hardison said.

"It will slow him down until Amy meets him at the door."

 _"Amy?"_ Howard asked.

 _"Amy..."_ Hardison speculated.

 _"Amy?"_ Amy sounded surprised. "I mean, me?"

"Amy?" Sheldon looked up from the computer.

Parker shrugged. "Raj will get the rich woman a drink. Penny will then tell her story of the cat food commercial. Bernadette and Howard will have the loud fight now, and Amy will be the vixen."

There was silence on the coms. She could hear nine people breathing.

"Well? Move it," she told them all. "Think of the children!"

#

"I don't know," Amy said. The dress was tight, and there was a lot less of it than she might have liked. 

"You can do this," Leonard told her. He wasn't convincing in the slightest.

Eliot finished making the adjustments on the borrowed dress, which had been in a pile of costumes at the back of the van and apparently belonged to someone named Sophie. He bit off the thread and stood up to look at her. "You can do this."

"Why is it that I believe him and not you?" Amy asked Leonard. 

Leonard's apologetic eyebrow-waggle didn't get him very far. 

"Go," Eliot said and shoved her cheerfully out of the van. 

#

"Oh, come now, there's nothing wrong with a quiet life," Amy told the old executive.

 _"Bat your eyelashes,"_ Parker told her on the com.

 _"And lean forward,"_ Penny added. _"Cleavage."_

 _Right_. In the background, she could hear Bernadette yelling at Howard.

"Oh, what can a gorgeous young thing like you understand about that?" the old executive said.

"I'm sure a lot of people wish for nothing more than a nice house in the suburbs," Amy said. "A warm home to come back to...a loving spouse, to share a glass of wine with, perhaps. Maybe one who will put his arms around you as you cuddle. Maybe in front of a fireplace..."

"Amy! Sheldon hates fireplaces!" Leonard snapped her out of it. "They give him nightmares inspired by fire-demons in computer games." 

"...I mean, that all sounds completely tedious and boring compared to a life of exotic travel and adventure!" 

#

"Nice save, man." Hardison told Leonard back in the van. 

"Her boyfriend isn't the easiest person," Leonard said. 

"Never would have guessed," Hardison said. "Oh, here we go, she got him to show her the pictures of his trip to Russia." The tiny camera in Amy's hair was sending back a perfectly clear image.

"It's got to be him." Eliot spotted the Russian appartchnik in one of the photos, his arm around the old executive. 

"Ok...isolating the image...creating a facial scan..." Hardison hummed as he worked. "Mapping...running an algorithm to compare with everyone at the party..."

" _How?_ " Leonard stared at the screen. "This is brilliant. Groundbreaking. Hardison, you're a genius." 

"Duh," Eliot said. 

"I mean, seriously. You could have your pick of research grants, tenured positions, research assistants...anything!"

"Huh?" Hardison looked at him in confusion. 

"You don't have to live like this," Leonard said. "The skulking about in vans, bouncing from place to place, pulling dangeous cons, being a criminal. You could have a normal life, Hardison."

"What, like yours?" 

The silence stretched out long enough for Hardison to regret the words. 

"Fair point," Leonard said. 

#

"There's another copy." Sheldon said. 

"What? Are you sure?" Parker said. 

"Yes." He closed his laptop. "There's a secondary server hidden somewhere in the building." 

_"We have to get all the copies,"_ Hardison said. 

"We will," Parker said. She was already running for the door. "Ok, everyone. Listen very carefully and do exactly what I say."

 


End file.
